India Downgraded From ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’ by US Think Tank
The Wire Staff
04/Mar/2021: India’s status has been downgraded from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free‘ by the US government-funded NGO Freedom House due to “a crackdown on expressions of dissent by the media, academics, civil society groups, and protesters”.
India’s score in the organisation’s annual Freedom in the World report this year – based on data from 2020 – was 67, a drop from 71/100 from 2020, which downgraded it from the free category.
The democracy advocacy group noted that India’s fall from the upper ranks of free nations could “have a particularly damaging impact on global democratic standards”. The report said that the deterioration in political rights and civil liberties had “only accelerated after Modi’s reelection in 2019” and that judicial independence had also come under strain.
“In one case, a judge was transferred immediately after reprimanding the police for taking no action during riots in New Delhi that left over 50 people, mostly Muslims, dead,” the report said referring to the transfer of Justice S. Muralidhar from the Delhi high court in February 2020.
The report also made a note of Uttar Pradesh’s ‘love jihad’ law to prohibit forced religious conversion through interfaith marriage and said that a number of Muslim men had been arrested for allegedly forcing Hindu women to convert to Islam.
It further cited the abrupt COVID-19 lockdown “which left millions of migrant workers in cities without work or basic resources” and “resulted in the dangerous and unplanned displacement of millions of internal migrant workers”. The lockdown, which had been announced by PM Modi on March 24, 2020, prompted thousands of migrant workers, who were stranded, to undertake long journeys home on foot. Many workers also died of starvation, exhaustion and rail accidents.
Referring to the vilification of members of the Tablighi Jamaat, the report further said that Muslims were scapegoated and blamed for the spread of the coronavirus and faced attacks by vigilante mobs. “Rather than serving as a champion of democratic practice and a counterweight to authoritarian influence from countries such as China, Modi and his party are tragically driving India itself toward authoritarianism,” it said.
“Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all,” the report said.
Freedom House’s report also said that attacks on press freedom had “escalated dramatically” under the Modi government and that authorities had used “security, defamation, sedition, and hate speech laws, as well as contempt-of-court charges, to quiet critical voices in the media”.
“Separately, revelations of close relationships between politicians, business executives, and lobbyists, on one hand, and leading media personalities and owners of media outlets, on the other, have dented public confidence in the press,” the report said in an apparent reference to the revelations from Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami’s alleged chats with the former chief executive of BARC Partho Dasgupta.
Regarding the US, which dropped three points over one year to 83/100, Freedom House said that the Trump presidency featured “ unprecedented attacks” on American democracy. “Only a serious and sustained reform effort can repair the damage done during the Trump era to the perception and reality of basic rights and freedoms in the United States,” it said.
The report also said that the “malign influence” of the Chinese regime in China was especially profound in 2020. “Its efforts also featured increased meddling in the domestic political discourse of foreign democracies, transnational extensions of rights abuses common in mainland China, and the demolition of Hong Kong’s liberties and legal autonomy,” it said.
In his first major policy speech about US’s new prioritie, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken referenced the report. “…We will renew democracy, because it is under threat. A new report of the independent watchdog group, Freedom House, is sobering. Authoritarianism and nationalism are on the rise around the world and governments are becoming less transparent and have lost the trust of the people,” he said on Wednesday.
The US democracy watchdog group, which was established in 1941 to mobilise support for American action against Germany in World War II, further noted that in countries like Algeria, Guinea, and India, “regimes that protests had taken by surprise in 2019 regained their footing, arresting and prosecuting demonstrators, passing newly restrictive laws, and in some cases resorting to brutal crackdowns, for which they faced few international repercussions”.
“With India’s decline to Partly Free,” the report said, “less than 20 percent of the world’s population now lives in a Free country, the smallest proportion since 1995.”
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‘Misleading, Incorrect, Misplaced’: Centre Reacts to India’s Downgrading in Think Tank Report
The Wire Staff
05/Mar/2021: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting both reacted strongly to the US government-funded NGO Freedom House’s report downgrading India’s status to a “partly free” country.
While the MEA spokesperson gave a terse reply to reporters when asked about the report, the I&B ministry issued a long press statement in reaction.
Democracy watchdog Freedom House, in a new report, has demoted India from “free” to “partly free”, flagging sustained erosion of civil liberties in the country.
MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, “The political judgements of Freedom House are as inaccurate and distorted as their maps. For example on the COVID-19 situation, there is a widespread appreciation in the world of our response, of our high recovery rate and of our low fatality rate. India has robust institutions and well established democratic practices. We do not need sermons especially from those who cannot get their basics right.”
The ‘map’ issue was also zeroed upon by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who said at an interaction, “I am concerned about this group which doesn’t get the Indian map correct. The Indian map on their website is wrong. They should first get our map right.”
Srivastava and Sitharaman were most probably referring to the map featured in the Freedom House’s tweet on the report, which did not include the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
‘Misleading, Incorrect’
“The Freedom House report, titled ‘Democracy Under Siege’, in which it has been claimed that India’s status as a free country has declined to ‘partly free’ is misleading, incorrect and misplaced, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said in a statement.
The report had claimed that the decline in India’s status was due to the manner in which “the Hindu nationalist government and its allies presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population”. It also highlighted a crackdown on expressions of dissent by the media, academics, civil society groups, and protesters.
Responding to the findings, the ministry said, “Government of India treats all its citizens with equality as enshrined under the Constitution of the country and all laws are applied without discrimination. Due process of law is followed in matters relating to law and order, irrespective of the identity of the alleged instigator.”
It claimed that “proportionate and appropriate action” was taken during the northeast Delhi riots. “Necessary legal and preventive actions were taken by the law enforcement machinery on all complaints/calls received, as per law and procedures,” the ministry said.
This claim of the government comes under question. Several reports have noted that the Delhi Police’s response was less than equal and favoured Hindu perpetrators of violence. In addition, the investigation into the riots has focused largely on activists of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests and not conspirators who played a far more active role.
The government also rebutted the allegation in the report that the COVID-19-induced lockdown “left millions of migrant workers in cities without work or basic resources” and “resulted in the dangerous and unplanned displacement of millions of internal migrant workers”.
The government said that the lockdown was announced to control the spread of the coronavirus and the period allowed the government to ramp up production capacity of masks, ventilators, personal protection equipment (PPE) kits, etc.
Denying the report’s claims that academics and journalists were intimidated, the government said, “Discussion, debate and dissent is part of Indian democracy.”
The report has claimed that though the private media are vigorous and diverse, and investigations and scrutiny of politicians do occur, but attacks on press freedom have escalated dramatically under the Modi government, and reporting has become significantly less ambitious in recent years.
Denying this, the government said that ‘Public Order’ and ‘Police’ are State subjects under India’s federal structure of governance.
“The responsibility of maintaining law and order, including investigation, registration and prosecution of crimes, protection of life and property, etc., rests primarily with the concerned State governments. Therefore, measures as deemed fit are taken by law enforcement authorities to preserve public order,” it said.
The report has also alleged that a wide variety of NGOs operate, but some, particularly those involved in the investigation of human rights abuses, continue to face threats, legal harassment, excessive police force, and occasionally lethal violence.
Rebutting this, the government said the Indian Constitution provides for adequate safeguards under various statutes, including the Protection of Human Rights Act 1993 for ensuring protection of human rights.
On the report’s claim that the authorities used assembly bans, internet blackouts, and live ammunition between December 2019 and March 2020 to quell widespread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and proposals to roll out a citizens’ registration process across the country, the government said, “…the temporary suspension of telecom/internet services is resorted to with the overarching objective of maintaining law and order under strict safeguards.”
Lastly, the government rebutted the claim that the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) amendment led to freezing of NGO Amnesty International’s assets, and said the NGO had received permission under the FCRA Act only once and that too 20 years ago on December 19, 2000.
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Activists Puncture Govt’s Claims on Steps It Took to Combat Migrant Workers’ Crisis
Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar
06/Mar/2021: In its rebuttal to the Freedom House report titled ‘Democracy Under Siege’ in which it has been claimed that India’s status as a free country has declined to “partly free”, the Centre has claimed that it was “misleading, incorrect and misplaced“. The Indian government then proceeded to spell out what it did for migrant workers and towards enhancing food security during the pandemic.
However, food rights campaigners and labour rights activists disagree with much of what the government has claimed.
Centre spells out ‘various measures’ it took
In its arguments against the contents of the report, the Centre said, on the specific issue of “government response to COVID-19 through lockdown’, that it took “various measures to address the situation”. In these, it referred to at least five points that covered migrant workers who faced immense hardship in taking the journey home as their workplaces shut down and public transport was brought to a grinding halt without any prior warning.
The Centre’s response said, “Government of India allowed state governments to utilise State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) for purpose of providing food, healthcare, shelter to homeless persons and migrant workers” and that “the government allowed the engagement of migrant workers in various activities outside containment zones which would allow them a livelihood”.
‘Policy changes did not translate into action on ground’
However, people working with migrant workers said this was not precise the case. Talking to The Wire, Sudhir Katiyar of Prayas Centre for Labour Research and Action said while the use of SDRF funds was allowed, it did not make a huge impact on the ground. “We recently organised an event in Ahmedabad on the issue of shelter for migrant workers. They allowed public rental during Covid and it was a major policy change but it has had no real impact so far,” he said.
Katiyar said his group also did a sit-in protest there demanding that the government release the existing housing stock for the migrant workers who were stranded in Ahmedabad and other cities. However, the guidelines for the policies were so tough that hardly anyone could benefit from them.
‘Migrant workers had no information of schemes, did not know how to return’
On the migrant workers being allowed to work outside containment zones, he said, in April-May they allowed workers to be employed within the states. But this was done to revive the units. However, most of the workers had by then proceeded to their native places. Many of them did not know about these measures and continued to walk towards their villages or town. Others did not have means to return to work as public transport was not operational.
As for the other claims of the Centre that it “announced a relief package of Rs 1.7 lakh crore which also covered migrant workers” and that it “launched a mission to boost employment and livelihood opportunities for migrant workers returning to their villages”, Katiyar said food packets were distributed to some workers who returned to their villages.
But, again, he said, the schemes did not succeed enough as “the migrant workers were not documented with them, they had no information on migrant workers and did not know how to reach out to them”.
On the other hand, he said, the migrant workers were also in a highly vulnerable state and did not know where to go and who to ask for assistance. “So in some big cities, they were provided food, but the problem pertaining to food persisted for them elsewhere.”
Also, he said, there was a major problem of rations not being distributed properly. “That again was an area where there was a lot of mismanagement.”
‘Return of workers indicates absence of employment in villages’
As for generation of employment in villages, he said, the main scheme for employment is MNREGA. “Had that scheme been successful, most of the people would not have returned to the cities. NREGA is the biggest scheme under which employment is granted. But it too is in a very messy state.”
On the Centre saying that under MNREGA the daily wages were “enhanced” and these “also covered returning migrant workers”, Katiyar said under the scheme the biggest problem is of delayed wages. “In times of COVID people would have needed payment on regular basis. But if you are making the payment after six months, it would not serve any purpose and then who will work under the scheme. The mismanagement of the scheme is a major reason which migration is there.”
Some packages and relief were provided in states like Jharkhand in the form of food packets, etc, but when it came to employment, there was no major impact, he added. Stating that about 80-90% people have returned to the big cities, he said many of them were now finding it hard to get work.
‘Food scheme came too late, millions were in distress by then’
As for the Centre’s claim in the rebuttal that “approximately 80 crore beneficiaries were provided 5kg wheat or rice, 1 kg pulses free of cost every month till November 2020 under the National Food Security Act (NFSA)”, food rights campaigner Anjali Bhardwaj of Satark Nagrik Sangathan said the government did announce the scheme but it came too late.
“Before imposing a hard lockdown like that what was important was that the government should have held consultations and discussions with state governments and experts and made sure that at least the basic needs of people – food and shelter – were taken care of before the lockdown was imposed. If their wages were protected and they could have stayed where they were before the lockdown, the distress would have been less,” she said.
‘Images of workers walking back symbolised lack of planning, implementation’
But, Bhardwaj charged that despite the pandemic starting internationally in January, adequate consultations were not held before the lockdown was imposed. “So what happened was that millions of families went into total distress and they lost any place to live, as they could not pay their rent and were rendered homeless, and they found it impossible to feed themselves and their families. This is why we saw the migrant workers walking back homes the way they did. Those pictures in a way symbolised the lockdown in India. That distress has to be seen as a failure of planning and implementation that was required,” she said.
In India, where nearly 90% people working in the unorganised sector, she said, it was essential for the government to realise that due to the pandemic many people would either lose their jobs and that the migrant workers and daily wagers would have no wages at all when the won’t be able to go out to work. “For people already living in poverty or on the brink, they do not have savings to both keep paying their rent and to afford two square meals for their families. So it was essential to protect their wages. But that did not happen.”
(Courtesy: The Wire.)
